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[Page S5469]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FALUN GONG
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, throughout my years in the Senate, I have
met with people from around the world who have been persecuted by their
own governments, but the stories I have heard from survivors and family
members of the victims of China's efforts to silence and eliminate
religious minorities continue to shock me. The Chinese Government
systematically brutalizes millions of people, including Tibetan
Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims, and Falun Gong practitioners.
Those who practice Falun Gong use meditation and are guided by a
philosophy of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, but because the
Chinese Communist Party fears any organized religion or association it
cannot control, it views this revival of traditional Chinese religion
as a threat to its survival.
Falun Gong practitioners recently marked the 20th anniversary of the
beginning of China's campaign of brutality against their community. On
July 20, 1999, hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners were arrested in
their homes in the middle of the night. Over the following week, as
many as 50,000 Falun Gong were reportedly detained. In the years since
that initial crackdown, the Chinese Government has relentlessly
continued its repression of Falun Gong.
Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested, interred at reeducation
camps, beaten, sleep-deprived, starved, sexually assaulted,
electrocuted, force-fed, shackled, and had their limbs slowly broken,
until they have renounced their beliefs and practices. They have been
ordered to participate in propaganda vilifying their own community.
They have had their organs harvested against their will. They have been
murdered. We will probably never know how many innocent people have
been the victims of these atrocities, since the Chinese Government
denies to the outside world that it is happening, while justifying it
to their own citizens.
The Chinese Government should immediately cease its arbitrary
detention and brutalization of Falun Gong practitioners and other
religious and ethnic minorities. It should release political prisoners
from reeducation centers, decriminalize religious and spiritual
practices, and allow international human rights groups and journalists
to interview survivors. It should commit to ending the use of torture,
organ harvesting of prisoners, and propaganda against minorities.
The plight of these people in China, the horrors of torture and
murder by the government, can seem very far away from Washington, DC,
and very far away from my State of Vermont. Yet Vermonters travel to
Washington to meet with me and my staff, urging Congress to take action
on behalf of Falun Gong. Vermonters are persistent people who rightly
refuse to let us forget about Falun Gong and the other victims of
China's repression. It is all too easy to ignore crimes against
humanity on the other side of the globe, when the victims are people we
will never meet, but Vermonters demand that we pay attention. The Falun
Gong deserve to be remembered, and they deserve the international
community's collective action.
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